In the western United States, exotic brook trout Salvelinus fontinalis frequently have a deleterious effect on native salmonids, and biologists often attempt to remove brook trout from streams by means of electrofishing. Although the success of such projects typically is low, few studies have assessed the underlying mechanisms of failure, especially in terms of compensatory responses. A multiagency watershed advisory group (WAG) conducted a 3-year removal project to reduce brook trout and enhance native salmonids in 7.8 km of a southwestern Idaho stream. We evaluated the costs and success of their project in suppressing brook trout and looked for brook trout compensatory responses, such as decreased natural mortality, increased growth, increased fecundity at length, and earlier maturation. The total number of brook trout removed was 1,401 in 1998, 1,241 in 1999, and 890 in 2000; removal constituted an estimated 88% of the total number of brook trout in the stream in 1999 and 79% in 2000. Although abundance of age-1 and older brook trout declined slightly during and after the removals, abundance of age-0 brook trout increased 789% in the entire stream 2 years after the removals ceased. Total annual survival rate for age-2 and older brook trout did not …

It is popular to discuss low energy physics in lattice gauge theory ill terms of the small eigenvalues of the lattice Dirac operator. I play with some ensuing pitfalls in the interpretation of these eigenvalue spectra. In short, thinking about the eigenvalues of the Dirac operator in the presence of gauge fields can give some insight, for example the elegant Banks-Casher picture for chiral symmetry breaking. Nevertheless, care is necessary because the problem is highly non-linear. This manifests itself in the non-intuitive example of how adding flavors enhances rather than suppresses low eigenvalues. Issues involving zero mode suppression represent one facet of a set of connected unresolved issues. Are there non-perturbative ambiguities in quantities such as the topological susceptibility? How essential are rough gauge fields, i.e. gauge fields on which the winding number is ambiguous? How do these issues interplay with the quark masses? I hope the puzzles presented here will stimulate more thought along these lines.

There is need for an improved test of human ability to assimilate dietary vitamin B{sub 12}. Assaying and understanding absorption and uptake of B{sub 12} is important because defects can lead to hematological and neurological complications. Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) is uniquely suited for assessing absorption and kinetics of {sup 14}C-labeled substances after oral ingestion because it is more sensitive than decay counting and can measure levels of carbon-14 ({sup 14}C) in microliter volumes of biological samples, with negligible exposure of subjects to radioactivity. The test we describe employs amounts of B{sub 12} in the range of normal dietary intake. The B{sub 12} used was quantitatively labeled with {sup 14}C at one particular atom of the DMB moiety by exploiting idiosyncrasies of Salmonellametabolism. In order to grow aerobically on ethanolamine, S. entericamust be provided with either pre-formed B{sub 12} or two of its precursors: cobinamide and dimethylbenzimidazole (DMB). When provided with {sup 14}C-DMB specifically labeled in the C2 position, cells produced {sup 14}C-B{sub 12} of high specific activity (2.1 GBq/mmol, 58 mCi/mmol) and no detectable dilution of label from endogenous DMB synthesis. In a human kinetic study, a physiological dose (1.5 mg, 2.2 KBq/59 nCi) of purified {sup 14}C-B{sub 12} …

The transient expansion of plutonium-gallium alloys observed both in the lattice parameter as well as in the dimension of a sample held at ambient temperature is explained by assuming incipient precipitation of Pu{sub 3}Ga. However, this ordered {zeta}{prime}-phase is also subject to radiation-induced disordering. As a result, the gallium-stabilized {delta}-phase, being metastable at ambient temperature, is both driven towards thermodynamic equilibrium by radiation-enhanced diffusion of gallium and at the same time pushed back to its metastable state by radiation-induced disordering. A steady state is reached in which only a modest fraction of the gallium present is tied up in the {zeta}{prime}-phase.